hi john  :)  so nice to hear from you!  hugs all around for you and the family. 

i know what you mean about being freed from jail yet staying in the cell.  thus the need for the encouragement to remind one another who we are and why … what we have been freed from and how … etc.  the daily onslaughts, and sometimes even moment-to-moment onslaughts of mental and emotional challenges to the contrary are what hold us in the 'cell' and cause us to go/run in and out of it. 

when viewing ourselves as still in prison, and as still being 'prisoners',  it is indeed 'scarier' outside the prison cell because we have been there for so long and it is both comfortably and uncomfortably 'familiar'.  it feels safe and secure … for a time … but those feelings are fleeting with a high rate of yo-yo-ing.  predictable and unpredictable insecure security is the best that legal mentality of such bondage has to offer us.  

i just had a thought … do we equate the earth itself as being our prison?  is it not merely a temporary land we are now visiting upon.  GOD created a gorgeous place for man and sadly man has been screwing it up from the beginning.  :(

back to basics again … is it not man's 'condition' that imprisons him and makes him a prisoner?  prisoner of his own self.  prisoner of sin and death. our 'condition' goes back to which condition we are in.  either the one without GOD or the one with GOD.  the condition of being dead in our trespasses and sins, or the miraculously free-ed condition of a New Creation Life who has no more need of the Law, much less a prison or a cell.  :)

i know you know all this, but we do have other visitors and readers and i just want to explain a bit where i am coming from. :)

the law itself is not the problem … never was.  in other words, there is nothing 'wrong' or 'evil' with the law.   the inherited weakness of our fallen humanity is/was the problem … the human without GOD.  the human without GOD could NEVER satisfy the law and all its demands.  that was met in Jesus Christ.  there is no longer any law to be satisfied for GOD.  it was satisfied in Jesus Christ.  :)  it is only 'man' who will never be satisfied, nor will he ever be satisfied with those who have been found satisfied in Christ!  the law is no longer what we need nor is it what we live by nor is it what we encourage one another with.  only Jesus Christ Is.  :)

somehow i all too often come across as tho' i am claiming to not struggle with the same challenges as others.  i do not mean to come across that way at all. i do know them and can relate concerning them all too well.  talk about 'familiar'.  haha

i just do not want to dwell and be or stay stuck in any of the all too familiar traps, nor yet to be revealed unfamiliar ones, but i know they are there … lurking in the shadows … things that can not wait to ensnare me.  GOD reveals them as only HE can, but they are not meant to be traps for us, but merely reminders of what we have been saved OUT of and WHO brought that all about because we never could and never would be able to free ourselves.  all praise is His!  :) 

as you said so beautifully, John … “We have EVERYTHING for godliness and life…and it's Him!”  :)  He Is the Encouragement i hope to dwell in and upon as much as is possible without all the distractions to the contrary!  :)  apparently distractions are good for HIM to reveal to us as being merely that, distractions.

waay too long, as usual … i will stop now … yay!  lol    hugs